Dylan on the basement stairs

sábado, 21 de octubre de 2017

I have had to come to this
city called Salt Lake and with a two-tier silhouette of jagged
buildings set against a mountainous background sculpted with canyons,
to reconnect with the desire that drove me to start this story three
years ago. And last night’s Dylan concert at the Eccles Theater
was something of a dreamlike movie, a film from another time edited
upon a familiar soundtrack, embroidered with a host of little lights
that shone like stars over the auditorium. It was I who added the
final surprise to the plot.

I had bought a ticket in the
central section of the first row, slightly to the left of the piano,
to see how, on yet another night, Dylan takes cover behind it as if
cloaked in a glass robe. And with a bit of luck, to try to get a
photograph of him with some rare expression. I waited until the
second encore, and as the chords of the Ballad Of A Thin Man
struck up, I opened the bag whose contents when I came in had caused
such amazement at the security checkpoint. During the fourth verse, I
put the top hat on.

Several voices behind me
complained, but I managed to stand still until, on taking centre
stage for the “final bow”, Dylan spotted me. It would have been
the perfect moment to take the perfect photo; that snapshot of time
standing still and an expression of astonishment that took both of us
back to that summer night in 67 on which a biblical bet allowed me to
win that tall black hat. Then Dylan called me innocent, and idiot
too. I don’t know what he must have thought last night on
recognizing that old trophy on my head. When I began to raise it in a
gesture of greeting, he had already turned round to leave the stage.
I didn’t even get my camera out.

Perfect pictures never get
to be taken, not with any kind of device, but they are tattooed
behind our eyelids. Like Dylan’s voice.

Tonight I’ll go back to
the Eccles Theater to attend his second concert in Salt Lake
City, this time in the first box on the left. I’ll try to get a
message to him beforehand, perhaps some of his favorite flowers too.

Side
3: Too Much Of Nothing; Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread; Ain't No
More Cane; Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood); Ruben Remus; Tiny
Montgomery.

Side
4: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere; Don't Ya Tell Henry; Nothing Was
Delivered; Open The Door, Homer; Long Distance Operator; This Wheel's
On Fire.

LINER
NOTES

“Beneath
the easy rolling surface of The Basement Tapes, there is some
serious business going on. What was taking shape, as Dylan and The
Band fiddled with the tunes, was less a style than a spirit -- a
spirit that had to do with a delight in friendship and invention.

[...]
The Basement Tapes are a testing and a discovery of
roots and memory; it might be why The Basement Tapes are, if
anything, more compelling today than when they were first made [...]”

sábado, 17 de junio de 2017

Sunlight
glimmers inside my caravan and wakes me from a dream of books and
whales with jazzy piano chords floating in the background. I fell
asleep last night looking at the box, not daring to open it. Now here
it is at my feet, round and closed like a perfect question. Without
even asking, the answer resonates inside my head: "You wanted
something and you don’t even know what it is, Nar."

I
make coffee and put the box on the table. I realize that the
emptiness of my desire has found its fulfillment in a threat: “It’s
alive, and it bites,” Dylan had warned me. His anger at losing the
bet resembled somewhat my own bewilderment, multiplied now by its
echo and by the minutes ticking by, none encouraging me to undertake
the denouement.

I
smoke cigarette number six and caress the round lid before lifting
it. As I do, I catch my image reflected in its inside mirror and I
see, in the circular belly, a top hat. Black, worn out, upside down.
"You're more innocent than I thought," Dylan had told me.
"What did you expect, idiot?" he would add now, witnessing
the mute perplexity of my realization.

“Can
I come in?”

The
laughing voice of Rick knocking at the caravan door rouses me from
self-absorption. In a reflex, I close the box before answering.

“Come
on in.”

“ ‘Morning,
Nar. Would you like to come and have breakfast with us? Garth fixed a
mountain of good stuff to help us recover from the hangover. What a
fucking night!”

“You
said it ...! I don’t know, I've already had a couple of coffees and
I'm not hungry, but thanks anyway for ...”

Rick
interrupts my sentence, coming closer with a laugh.

“What’ve
we got here! The box of discord! Dylan was really pissed off when ...”

“Don’t
open it!” I hear myself saying in a despotic voice.

“Okay,
okay, cool it. You don’t have to be like that ... Besides, I
already know what’s inside that hatbox. I've opened it a hundred
times.”

“What
did you call it?”

“Hat-box.
Why do you make that face?”

“Nothing
... I understood something else. Forget it.”

Rick
looks at me closely for a few seconds, then smiles and pulls a
crumpled sheet out of one of his jeans pockets, torn in half.

“I
came to bring you this too, I thought you'd like to have it. It was
bitch having to take care of your desires, you know?” he says as he
unfolds the papers.

I
immediately recognize the sheet on which Dylan had written what he
wanted to get from me in case he won the bet. Without thinking, I rip
the two fragments out of Rick's hand. Then I put them in my box,
which now has a name like that of anyone: a few letters on a
safe-conduct for the territory of the rational, I think as I see Rick
out.

“Thanks
man. And now go, please.”

Rick
looks down and, turning his back to me, speaks quietly.

“I
suppose it fucked you up making Dylan so mad and maybe not being
allowed to get back into the basement, all to win an old box with a
hat inside ... Well, now you have it, and also these pieces of waste
paper. Read ’em and weep, as we say in poker. And then you better
throw it all away; what happened will keep fucking you up. When
something hurts a lot, Nar, it doesn’t matter what you do: it makes
no difference.”

When
Rick leaves, I pick up the hatbox and sit on the steps of the
caravan, placing the box to my left. I light a cigarette. Then I open
it. I put on the top hat, and in the end I read that one single word Dylan
wrote to shape his desire and at the same time appease his fury. Six
letters, six strings that he was playing for me right here, just a
few days ago:

domingo, 14 de mayo de 2017

Dylan came back from the basement just a
few minutes later, with a stormy look on his face, bringing the round
box I´d won in that unexpected bet. He threw it at me with the same
rage that infused his words.

- Watch what's inside! It´s alive. And
it bites.

- Thank you for the warning.

- You're an idiot, Nar. If you were so
sure you´d win, why didn´t you go for something more valuable?

- That's precisely the reason I went low
-I said as I watched the box land at my feet.

Dylan looked like he
might reply but instead his face froze and he gave me a stare I found
difficult to hold. Then he turned his back on me. Suddenly the scene
was over.

-
Fuck you, "Nar
of the Mysteries"!

With
a kick that followed his furious farewell, the box rolled towards the
bonfire. It stopped just short of the flames, though it didn´t open.
Groups of dismayed faces scattered to make way:
with
hands in pockets and seven-league strides, Dylan
was disappearing again
towards his car.

Feeling
the weight of everyone´s eyes upon
my shoulders, I stared
at the box for a moment before moving to pick it up. It seemed
smaller now than when I´d seen it in the basement. Rather than hold
it by its strap, I lifted it up and held it close to me with my arm
around it, and casting my eyes downwards, I went to my caravan.
People were silent. Dylan´s car revving
loudly on the way out to the road sounded like a cracking whip in the
midst of that mutism.

I was opening my door
when I heard what sounded like a slow, glum, arrhythmic clapping
coming from the speakers at the living room windows. I turned around
and saw Richard closing them from the inside, gesturing me with his
hand.